Images of everyday life

[Silvana Siddali]

There's a fantastic exhibition of paintings of everyday American life currently on display at the Met in New York.

The web site lets you click on & enlarge individual images, and will also give you detailed information about the artist and the story behind each painting.

This is a fantastic visual resource. I'm especially happy that the web site allows viewers to download and save the images. I wish I could see the exhibit itself, of course! But it'll close in January 2010 and I doubt I'll make it to the east coast before then.

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/americanstories/index.aspx

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Images of everyday life

Phenomenal exhibit. Many of the works are as valuable in confirming the use of certain everyday middle-period ceramics and household goods as Hogarth and Vermeer are the earlier stuff.

[John Pellarin]

Re: Images of everyday life

Agree on all accounts. I think that many times we over look these genre paintings as a fantastic resource. William S. Mount, Bingham, all great artists to boot! Anyone up for a trip the New York?

John Pellarin

[ElizabethClark]

Re: Images of everyday life

I didn't see on the site--any hope of buying exhibit catalogs?

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Images of everyday life

I didn't see on the site--any hope of buying exhibit catalogs?

http://store.metmuseum.org/Exhibition-Catalogues/American-Stories-Paintings-of-Everyday-Life-1765-1915/invt/americanstories

[BenjaminLDavis]

Re: Images of everyday life

A real and palpable window into another time: to really see into the soul of an age,
look at the paintings, read the popular books of the time.
I really liked "The Death Struggle" - like Ivanhoe, but transplanted here and then.
And, of course, "War News from Mexico" and the satire of "Post Office."
(I can hear Andy Ackeret chuckling even now . . .)
Great stuff, Silvana ~ thanks.

[ElizabethClark]

Re: Images of everyday life

Thanks, Garrison! I know what's going on my Christmas wish list!

[Carolann Schmitt]

Re: Images of everyday life

The exhibit catalog is wonderful and worth every penny. I highly recommend adding it to your reference library. I've seen some of the original paintings before and am looking forward to seeing rest when I view the exhibit in a few weeks. And (shameless plug) there will be a presentation on using genre paintings as a source at the 2010 Ladies & Gentlemen of the 1860s Conference. The presentation will include some of the paintings in this exhibit and dozens of other from other collections.

[John Kagi]

Re: Images of everyday life

Thanks for the great exhibit link. I spent a bit too much time on that site today. :)

Accustomed to "imagining" and speculating on colors and shades, the viewing of period paintings at least partially fills so may voids left by b&w images. Like most of us here, I have experimented for several years with questioning and weighing b&w image shades as colors, which can be great fun to tinker with in a program like photoshop, but so far, to my knowledge at least, it is far from conclusive.

Where the digital detail of paintings may (or sometimes may not) disappoint compared to a LOC hi-res image, brush strokes of color really bring our subjects and times of attention to life in ways black & white photographs simply cannot.

More to the point, I suspect many painters of this era (and its many schools) are much like those of us are this hobby: where painters sometimes fail in accuracy by misperception or even by design or expediency, the intention of a great many is to communicate certain details they believe that are both important and are realities that they do in fact grasp.

Like many here, what sometimes is even more interesting is how some aspects of painting present details for study the artist might not even have imagined as important at the time of the painting, such as where artistic license is used and where it is not even thought of being used. I refer specifically to the mini-subjects such as those already mentioned above, the artists' levels of attention to details such as eating utensils, clothing colors, patterns, hair styles, etc and generally to those subjects the artist included but did not necessarily consciously treat as "central" subjects.

While I bit my tongue more than once while reading the accompanying 21st century interpretative commentaries, these "modern" interpretative angles also are a decent representation of a prevailing approach in our age and was quite interesting to consider as well.

Thanks again.